Think Green? Move to the Suburbs! (18. November 2007, 11:51 by Derek Young) ~ Sell Prius. Buy Back Hummer?
The TNT’s Insight section has a piece from the Washington Post that criticizes the move toward city densification and promotes the notion of suburban villages instead.
The article states, “Building what we call ‘an archipelago of villages’ seems far more reasonable than returning to Industrial Age cities and mass transit systems.” Highly dense cities, it argues, creates “heat islands” that contribute to global warming far more often than low-density suburbs. And it’s more expensive to build green in high density areas. Besides, people don’t want to give up their cars. Hmm… Read the article. I’m sure you’ll have some thoughts.
What do you think?
Link to The News Tribune
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Mr. Kotkin is at it again… don’t know where to start. I would caution anyone reading Mr. Kotkin’s material. His claims that a minority of persons favor city’s and that the concentrated “urban heat island effect” is a great concern for global warming might not be entirely accurate. Why would Mr. Kotkin advocate that sprawl is better for the environment than urban development?
Couldn’t one argue that the amount of energy it takes to heat/cool 2,500+ square foot suburban single family dwellings and the amount of C02 produced by the automobiles that suburbanites depend on contribute just as much, if not more towards global warming than urban ‘heat islands’.
This was my favorite…
“But short of a crippling fuel shortage or some other catastrophic event, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll ever see the widespread success of heavily promoted strategies such as dense, transit-oriented developments or the wholesale abandonment of the suburbs”
Isn’t it possible we will see a catostrophic fuel shortage in our lifetime?
Sometimes I wonder if Mr. Kotkin writes these pieces simply to boost his ego and get a rise out of the planning/environmental community.
1 | Posted by snoopy | Nov 18, 12:14 PM
The article misses completely most of the problems associate with suburban sprawl: loss of farmland, additional pollution, loss of community, loss of time spent commuting, large uses of fossil fuels, and huge public subsidies required for roads.
His one attempted point: Studies show that concentrating concrete, asphalt, steel and glass in cities like New York creates environmentally worrisome “heat islands” far more than low-density landscapes. is meaningless. Of course a city block likely creates more heat than a suburb block. Yet, the analysis should have been how much heat per person.
Per person, a suburb certainly requires the construction of more road building per person than in s city so the amount of total heat produced is far greater overall. So the writers one attempt to make a point fails.
Then the writer appears to abandon his defense of suburbia altogether when he suggests that workplaces should be near homes. Yet, this is by defintition the antithesis of sprawl.
In his review of Sprawl: a compact history James Kuntler falays the arguments of the often industry supported (last) defenders of suburbia which would likely earn him the COTW every week:
…no combination of alternative fuels or systems for using them will allow us to run America the way we currently run it, or even a substantial fraction of it. We are not going to run Wal-Mart, Walt Disney World, and the interstate highway system on hydrogen, coal synfuels, tar sand or oil shale distillates, bio-diesel, ethanol, recycled french-fry oil, solar electricity, wind power, or nuclear fission. The stark truth of the situation is that we are simply going to have to make other arrangements – and I’m sorry to have to repeat that this will be the case whether we like it or not. Suburbia will be coming off the menu. We will no longer be able to resort to the stupid argument that it is okay because we chose it…
The result in American suburbia today is a set of places where private luxury is exalted and public space is grievously dishonored, damaged, and diminished…where public space is so debased that the only place children can find to play beyond their back yards is the berm between the WalMart and the Winn Dixie.
This sad fact explains why the chronic disappointment of suburbia inspires ridicule even among those who live in it. It hasn’t delivered very well on its promises for a long time now. The megaburbs have all the congestion of a city and none of the human contact. They have all of the isolation of the country, but no real connection to nature.
We flatter ourselves to think that the shopping malls are an adequate substitute for real main streets.
http://www.friendsofpiercecounty.org/FPC-newsletter_Sept-Oct-2007.pdf
5 | Posted by Phil | Nov 18, 01:32 PM
“We can accommodate our need for space and still leave ample room for a flourishing natural environment, as well as for agriculture. By preserving open space and growing in an environmentally friendly manner, we can provide a break from the monotony of concrete and glass and create ideal landscapes for wildlife preservation.”
Right. Because we’ve done so well with this so far. In fact, everyday I read about how farms (especially family farms) are flourishing in America and wildlife is coexisting with suburban culture in harmony.
What planet is Kotkin describing?
Ironically, a recent study (unfortunately, I don’t have a link to it) shows that residents of New York City produce about ten times LESS carbon emissions than the typical American, and far less than even lower density supposedly “green” cities like Seattle and Portland. Obviously, this is because 80 percent of New Yorkers use public transportation and have walkable neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. This alone seems to be enough to contradict some of Mr. Kotkin’s arguments.
Sometimes I wonder if Mr. Kotkin writes these pieces simply to boost his ego and get a rise out of the planning/environmental community.
Take him for what he’s worth. He’s smart but he talks out of his ass shoots from the hip a lot because it gets him printed (witness the TNT article)… which helps his demand for the corporate sideshow circuit.
8 | Posted by morgan | Nov 18, 10:49 PM
That op-ed piece in the tnt was mostly hogwash. Energy consumption per capita plummets if you go from a one story building to ten. Energy use for heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and transportation all scale down as you increase density to that point. Those are conservation effects you can’t get from the greenest “low impact development” schemes in the suburbs.
9 | Posted by Chris Karnes | Nov 19, 12:06 AM
The only contribution the metropolitan “heat island” effect has on Climate Change is through mis- representative temperature readings.
10 | Posted by The Gulag | Nov 19, 02:10 AM
The TNT posted another piece about the failure of Proposition No. 1. The author argues that any new measure needs to be slimmed down. Unfortunately, he would take the infrastructure out and leave in the roads portion:
Proposals developed must focus only on critical needs that make a difference regionally. Those needs must take a significantly higher priority than such things as streetcars, trail extensions and roundabouts.
Question: why? Why is subsidizing yet another decade of suburban sprawl is Pierce County better that restoring the infrastructure in the cities?
One can make the case that the earth is indeed flat if you only look at specific criteria. Score another point for the post-modern ‘logic spin.’
12 | Posted by David Boe | Nov 19, 08:08 AM
The answers you get depend on the questions asked.
I reject the notion that the depletion of energy, natural land resources, and global warming is a “what” problem. If it is true that the problem is technolgy based then it follows that the solution is a matter of manipulating mathematical formulas and applying technological innovations to the physical environment.
Kotkin only gets close to the real problem and its solution when he says that we should improve the places where most of us choose to live and work.
Where do people get the notion that they can choose to do whatever they want? The real issue is “who” problem.
Kotkin acknowledges that when he suggests that government policy is the solution, even though there will always be a rebellious contingent seeking suburbia.
13 | Posted by Mofo from the Hood | Nov 19, 10:15 AM
That the TNT printed this oped strikes me as lazy journalism. If Tacoma (or Seattle) were anywhere nearly as developed as NYC, maybe this would be worth talking about, but (as drizell frequently reminds us), all of the major cities around here are relatively suburban outside of their small urban cores.
What I would like to see is someone examine why the construction of new housing needs to out-pace population growth. Why should we even need new suburbs? Now there’s something worth examining. (Even though I know that the answer probably just has to boil down to “market demand”.)
14 | Posted by jamie from thriceallamerican | Nov 19, 10:45 AM
This new Kotkin article is a tough read like the first one in that one has to break through miles of flak to get to what he is trying to say, which is that he is a social conservative.
Part of the problem, in my view, is that he doesn’t have the language or doesn’t use the basis for his position, which is a distinctive Christian worldview.
Just like his first article, he seems to be grappling with an intuitive sense that the root of society’s problems is man. Then in both articles he throws in some kind of landscape improvement plan which will likely solve a current social problem. In the second article right near the ending is a testimonial that says that one thing that will transform and retain life in cities is better parks. And right after that statement he claims that the family is the foundation of [society](He almost says that. I sense that he fears the liberal elites who want to define and control the family with government policies.). The end statement actually comes out sounding like a capitulation to state economic development agendas—-Strong economies are the result of strong families. Kotkin is almost there. Strong economies, like strong families, require strong leaders.
16 | Posted by Mofo from the Hood | Nov 27, 05:39 PM
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